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However, despite initially standing up to Brussels, he ended up approving much of the austerity package which was overseen by the EU, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund in the so-called ‘troika’.

He attacked this in his European Parliament speech, saying: “We had technocratic institutions like the troika who had the keys of economic sovereignty and were not responsible to anybody.”

However Mr Tsipras did emphasise that Greece remained committed to the EU.